"When you walk as many hallways in as many schools as I do, high heels just aren't cutting it," Zosky said jokingly.

But it's not just the shoes that make Zosky stand out in Allentown School District's central administration.

It's also her title, the only one like it in the Lehigh Valley: chief turnaround officer, a position created earlier in the school year when Superintendent Gerald Zahorchak and the School Board accepted $7.8 million in controversial federal School Improvement Grants for six persistently low-performing schools.

And it's her job: administering the financial and academic components of the grant. She takes an auditor's eye to studying how students perform on an assortment of stardardized tests, trying to untangle the results to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. While she is focused on the six schools that received the grant funds, her work may be expanded district wide if she can figure out a systematic approach to improving test scores that could lead to increasing the graduation rate, which now stands at about 60 percent.

"It's a root cause analysis," Zosky said.

She does it not from a computer at central administration, but by walking the halls and talking to teachers at Central, Raub, Trexler and Harrison-Morton middle schools, and Allen and Dieruff high schools. Her near daily visits to the schools are her reminder that most of the district's 17,860 students are just like she was — poor.

"I am doing this because I was one of those kids and feel that every child, no matter what their situation, should have the opportunity and support to pursue their dreams," said Zosky, 42, and a 1986 Allen High graduate.

That human approach to data analysis has helped calm the controversy that had swirled around the federal grants, which called for the removal of four principals who now report to Zosky.

"Initially, with her presence in the building it felt like we had another observer, another clipboard carrier," Frank Nickishere, teachers union officer, said as Zosky walked past his Trexler Middle School classroom. "But as she's proven herself, everyone's relaxed. And what's best about her is she walks around and asks, 'How can I help? What support do you need?'"

"I'm their advocate," Zosky said.

The turnaround officer job is relatively new in American public education. President Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, lists it as a condition for winning the U.S. Department of Education's School Improvement Grant and the larger competitive grant, Race to the Top.

Rick Hess, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said the turnaround concept is a common-sense approach for troubled schools. But it is so new he's not sure if it's being implemented well, he said.

"Therefore, it's not yet clear how often turnarounds will deliver as promised, or simply result in more bureaucracy and consulting contracts," Hess said.

Zosky is the local test case.

Zahorchak said Zosky's familiarity with the district and experience landed her the $98,000 a year grant-funded position. "This is a triple-A personality," he said. "She knows the business community, knows how government works and is conscientious about doing work."

In other words, she knows how sticky red tape can be. Zosky is learning there's a lot more red tape in public education than there was in Lower Macungie Township, where she was appointed in 2007 to the Board of Commissioners and served for two years.

At least in Lower Macungie, Zosky and the other commissioner had direct access to budgets and oversight on spending.

In the school district, Zosky, whose job calls for her to coordinate "academic educational and fiscal activities" of the grant, has not been able to wrest complete financial control of the School Improvement money from the central administration grants office, which historically has administered all money that flows from Harrisburg and Washington, D.C..

"It would be my decision to have grant money flow through the principals," Zosky apologetically told Raub Middle School Principal Susan Elliot during a recent meeting at the school.

Elliot said she is confident in Zosky's ability to do her job. She has seen initiatives come and go with little documentation of their effectiveness. Zosky, Elliot said, keeps precise records and firm timetables and has brought a more structured approach to managing grants.

Zosky's past is driving her. She grew up in a rowhouse in a blue-collar neighborhood and was the first in her family to graduate from college. She earned an accounting degree from Long Island University, then worked in New York and at Mack trucks, which sent her to France to study management.

Zosky helped found Seven Generations Charter School in the East Penn School District and ran a consulting business before being tapped by the district.

Now, nearly every day of the week, Zosky is driving to the schools and is even setting up office hours in them. She welcomes her time there and is in awe of teachers who must instruct regular, special education and non-English speaking students at the same time.

"It's important for me to walk in their shoes," Zosky said. "I'd be remiss if I didn't do that."